Mexico sent a drug lord Rafael Caro QuinteroWho is wanted for the murder of an American DEA agent in 1985 in the United States with 28 other prisoners requested by the US government, two sources confirmed at CBS News on Thursday.
The Mexican government has confirmed the transfer to a statementBy saying: “They were wanted for their links with criminal organizations for drug trafficking, among other crimes.”
The 29 people who were detained in various prisons in Mexico were transferred to several cities in the United States on Thursday, including Chicago; Houston; McKinney, Texas; New York; Phoenix; San Antonio; Washington, DC and White Plains, New York, said the Mexican government.
The Mexican government said that transfers had been made “within the framework of institutional protocols with respect due to their fundamental rights”.
There were also two leaders of the Los Zetas cartel, Mexican Miguel Treviño Morales and his brother Omar Treviño MoralesKnown as the Z-40 and Z-42, confirmed the manager.
The removal of the drug lords of Mexico coincided with a visit to Washington by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, and other senior economic and military officials. The meeting was the last of the negotiations underway with the United States on trade and security relationswho have radically changed since President Trump took office.
Caro Quintero had walked freely in 2013 after 28 years in prison when a court canceled his 40 -year sentence for the kidnapping and murder of the US administration agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. Brutal murder has marked a weak point in American-mexical relations.
FBI via AP
Caro Quintero, the former head of the Guadalajara cartel, had since returned to drug trafficking and unleashed bloody lawn battles in the border state of northern Mexico of Sonora until it was arrested by Mexican forces in 2022.
In January, a non -profit group representing Camarena’s family sent a letter to the White House urging the Trump administration to renew long -standing American requests for the extraditious Mexico to the extradition of Caro Quintero, according to a copy of the letter provided to the Associated Press by a person familiar with the awareness of the family.
“His return to the United States would give the family the necessary closure and would serve the best interest of justice,” said the letter.
The United States had asked for the extradition of Caro Quintero shortly after its arrest in 2022. But the request remained stuck at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mexico for unknown reasons as a predecessor and political mentor of Sheinbaum, Andrés Manuel Lopez Obradorhas seriously reduced Mexican cooperation with the DEA to protest against the operations of the application of American laws in Mexico targeting senior political and military civil servants.
“If he is sent to the United States outside of official extradition, and if Mexico has not imposed any restrictions, he can be prosecuted for what the United States wants,” according to Bonnie Klapper, a former Federal Prosecutor of Narcotics in Brooklyn who knows the case.
The transfer comes as the best Mexican officials are in Washington, DC, trying to withdraw the threat of the Trump administration of Impose 25% of prices on all Mexican imports Next week.
Mr. Trump said Thursday that he intended to move forward with the sanctions, writing on Social truth That “drugs always flow in our country in Mexico and Canada at very high and unacceptable levels”.
In exchange for delaying the prices, Trump had insisted that Mexico retracts the United States-Mexico Border, cartels and fentanyl productionDespite significant migration and overdoses drops in the past year. The moves may indicate that the negotiations are evolving as you approach the rate deadline.
The removal of the Treviño Morales brothers also marks the end of a long process that started after the capture in 2013 of Miguel Treviño Morales and, two years later, of his brother, Omar. The process was injured for so many years that the Attorney General of Mexico City, Alejandro Gertz Manero, described the offsets as “really shameful”.
The Treviño Morales family, which the American authorities have accused of having directed the violent cartel in the northeast of prison, have charges in the process of being in the United States for participation in a criminal organization, drug trafficking, firearms and money laundering.
